Thomas Wolfe Quotes

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.

Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.

America - it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.

Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.

I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.

Making the world safe for hypocrisy.

It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South--so much in balance, in agreement--and yet... the whole world lies between.

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure.

There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one.

There’s no sight on earth more appealing than that of a woman making dinner for someone she loves.

You can't go home again

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

O lost, And by the wind grieved, Ghost, Come back again.

Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good.

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.

Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

...he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he had left, yet does not say 'The town is near,' but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.

And who shall say--whatever disenchantment follows--that we ever forget magic; or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold?

I don't know yet what I am capable of doing, but, by God, I have genius -- I know it too well to blush behind it.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Only the dead know Brooklyn.

Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good.

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money compliments or publicity.

Most of the time we think we're sick it's all in the mind.

Is not this the true romantic feeling - not to desire to escape life but to prevent life from escaping you.

Death - the last voyage the longest the best.

That enfabled rock that ship of life that swarming million-footed tower-masted sky-soaring citadel that bears the magic name of the Island of Manhattan.

There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.